Wednesday, August 31, 2011

D-r-e-a-r-y

That's how I'm spelling "Wednesday" today. It's gray and still and HUMID out there today so I'm kind of glad I have to go sit in the dive shop. I should be paid to endure a day like today. As long as it straightens out for Saturday's Two Rivers Kite Festival that Skully and Cookie and I are going to. I'm very excited to go and see all the acrobatics and all the beautiful kites flying AND buying a Chinese lantern to launch after dark with all the other attendees. I can't wait!

August 30--Anatolia, Vessel Terminating in the Forepart of a Stag. Raeleyne dreamed of falconers and men in soft shoes with curled toes all week. She was working to get the Hittite artifacts ready for the new exhibit and had been putting in long hours. She wasn't all that familiar with Hittite art and culture so the items had been a revelation. The stag vessel was a good example. As she'd sat with her arsenal of sable brushes and distilled water teasing dust out of the intricate reliefs on the band under the rim she'd thought of the artisans who had worked so many centuries before. The rudimentary tools and how hard it must have been to mine and refine the silver made her appreciate the thing all the more. To think of the many hands, high- and low-born alike, had handled the cup over the last millennia gave her chills.

It took me a few minutes to figure out where on the big item the featured detail was. Turns out it's a drinking cup that looks like a stag, horns and all, and where the hind quarters should be is the handle and rim of a drinking cup. Odd but beautiful. Okey-dokey, I'm off to shower, dress, and go spend the day keeping the world (or at least my corner of it) safe from scuba diving.
--Barbara